Plastindia changes course, will keep 2015 show in Delhi

By: Steve Toloken

November 22, 2013

Organizers of the Plastindia show are reversing course and will keep the next edition of the fair, India's largest plastics event, in New Delhi in 2015. The show had been planning to move to a new exhibition center under construction in Gujarat state.

Some of the show's overseas partners and Indian exhibitors were worried about the Gujarat site, said Mamta Oza, chief marketing and exhibitions manager for the Mumbai-based Plastindia Foundation, which operates the fair.

"It was because of the overseas partners being apprehensive about the whole thing, as well as from Indian exhibitors," she said in a Nov. 22 telephone interview with Plastics News.

Oza said the Foundation plans to make an official announcement in the next few days, but she said the management committee decided to keep the show at New Delhi's Pragati Maidan fairgrounds after a delegation of Plastindia Foundation executives attended the K 2013 trade fair last month in Germany.

"After coming from K, the management committee decided on the issue," she said.

The PlastIndia show has marketing and support alliances with both Messe Düsseldorf, the organizer of the K fair, the world's largest plastics show, and Hong Kong-based Adsale Group, the organizer of the Chinaplas, the second largest.

The maneuverings surrounding the show have proven contentious within India's plastics community, with the difficulties apparently causing the Foundation to replace its president last month.

Bipin Shah, who had been president of the Foundation until resigning last month shortly before the K show, had pushed to move Plastindia to the Mahatma Mandir fairgrounds in Gandhinagar, near the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat. But that facility is still under construction.

Shah had argued that the 30-year-old Pragati Maidan Fairground in New Delhi was outdated and did not have enough electric power and other facilities to adequately host the show. In its last edition in 2012, Plastindia had 1.07 million square feet of exhibition space, slightly more than the NPE show in the United States.

The new Plastindia President, Subhash Kadakia, who is also managing director of resin compounding firm Kadakia Plastics & Chemicals Pvt. Ltd., said in an interview at the K fair that there were differences between Shah and other board members over moving the show.

Kadakia, who had said he supported moving the show to Gujarat, said the discussions had an "emotional" tone and said that Shah could have communicated better with the Foundation's management committee.

The Foundation initially announced in May it was moving the show to Gujarat. That prompted more internal debate in the Foundation during the summer, with questions being raised about whether the Gujarat facility could be ready, according to Plastindia officials.

The Foundation then issued another news release on Sept. 20 reaffirming Gujarat as the location.

The show is now scheduled to take place Feb. 5-10, 2015, at the Pragati Maidan complex.

The Foundation announced late in the day Nov. 22 that it has scheduled a news conference for Nov. 25 in Mumbai, with Kadakia and J.R. Shah, the chairman of its National Executive Council for the 2015 show.